


Wide Open Space

by rivier



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:41:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22883455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivier/pseuds/rivier
Summary: Cyberwoman coda, Ianto POV.  Gen / het, with a gentle undertow of other things that might be fluttering in the balmy air of Cardiff Bay.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Lisa Hallett/Ianto Jones
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	Wide Open Space

**Author's Note:**

> Written a long, long time ago, slightly tweaked to reflect later canon. 
> 
> Truth is I'm a sad sucker for dented emo, so watching 'Cyberwoman' left me with the urge to fill in that little gap near the end.
> 
> Originally posted to lj. Ah, nostalgia!

Cold, the concrete floor is cold under his shins. He must have fallen in water at some point he can't remember. His trousers are soaked through, and the cold seeps up, through the floor and into the ruined suit, his bones, up and up into every part of him.

Something tugging at his hand. Ianto looks down. It's Jack, kneeling in front of him, pulling the gun out of his fingers. He'd forgotten. He really isn't trying to hang on, it's just that his hand has curled tight around the metal, frozen there. He watches Jack easing each finger loose, the way the skin sticks a little because, because... 

Her blood. On his hands, on the floor around him.

Jack's speaking to him. Ianto stares at his moving lips, mesmerised, but he can't work out what Jack's saying. The sound is muffled, the way it was on the day HQ was attacked, when all the explosions left his ears ringing with the same huge, dull static. Like that now. When did the bomb go off here?

He can't think of anything to say: can't move, can't even shrug. Jack puts a hand on his shoulder and nods, _it's OK_ , and Ianto watches as the room washes red and black around him, everything sliding away like a telescope in reverse.

***

He's sitting in the bath. There's steam drifting up past the taps, so the water must be hot but Ianto still can't feel anything but the cold, familiar and numbing. He looks down at his legs, pale as pink quartz, watches the faint rust-like tinge swirling in the water. More red rust floating slowly away from his hands. He doesn't want to move them.

It's the no-nonsense bathroom in the Hub. Ianto recognises the grout in the tiles behind the taps, splatter-stained a vicious green. He never did get to see what it was that had sprayed the same vivid slime all round the bathroom. Some visitor Jack had decided to dispose of personally, though he'd left the aftermath for Ianto to clean up. Nothing he'd tried had been able to get the green out of the grout, though. He'd been thinking about re-grouting it, but there hadn't been time.

"Well, don't just sit there..." Owen is slouched on the floor, propped in the bathroom doorway. He looks pinched and pissed-off: reassuringly normal for him. He points at the shelf next to the bath.

"Soap and shampoo, there. You need to - look, you're not injured apart from a few bruises, bloody lucky if you ask me. I helped you get your kit off, that's as far as I go. Sort the rest out for yourself."

Ianto doesn't say anything, but the question must have been there in his face. Owen sighs, shrugging. "Captain's orders. You're not to be left on your own. Trust me, as soon as he gets back I'm out of here."

It's weird: Ianto recognises the words, but he just doesn't _understand_ them, any of them. The bathroom's too quiet and far too bright, gleaming white Hub tiles everywhere. He takes a breath, lets himself slide slowly back, back and down, closes his eyes and feels the water rise over his face in a gentle caress.

That's better. Dark, and the distant clanking and rumbling of the Torchwood pipes. Still cold from head to toe. He could stay like this until -

A tight grip on his arm pulls him roughly upright. Owen's leaning over the bath, looking even more annoyed. "Oi, oi, none of that!"

Ianto stares at him, confused. Owen lets go of his arm, sighing, and reaches over for the shampoo. "God, alright, come on then..."

Ianto bows his head, watching soap-suds splatter onto the rusted water as Owen’s fingers dig into his scalp. 

***

He's in the car, wrapped in towels and covered in someone's coat. Jack's? Owen is driving, Jack next to him. Tosh and Gwen are in the back, boxing him in. Gwen is hunched into herself, though from time to time he feels the slight heat of her breath on his cheek, knows she's staring at him. Tosh is pressed against his side, or maybe he's leaning against her. She's holding his hand tightly, fingers laced together. Each time they stop at traffic lights or junctions, she gives them an even tighter squeeze.

It's still dark. He has no idea what time it is, but there's hardly any other traffic. As they pass the street-lamps, the light throws a reflection of Owen's face onto the windscreen, Jack's a second later, then gone, then back again. The orange light flattens them into twin masks, distant and inhuman.

No-one says anything, but the dull thrum of the engine is soothing. It reminds him of the night-long drive from London to Cardiff, months ago, a convoy of anonymous lorries transporting equipment salvaged from the carnage of Canary Wharf. In the cab of Transport #9, a few feet away from the secure container in the back, the one he'd packed himself and stamped 'Classified' like the other bits and pieces of archived alien tech that had survived the attack on Torchwood HQ. 

It had taken him days. But with so few survivors to work on the ruined site, at least no-one had ever tried to go with him into what was left of the conversion plant.

He'd worn her heart monitor on his wrist, watching the tiny pulse of blue light, all the way down the M4 and across the Severn, heading towards a full moon hanging brightly over Newport.

***

When he wakes up again, he's in bed. It takes him the longest time to recognise the room. It's the flat he rented when he came here to their last chance, this other Torchwood. Next door, the living room will be full of boxes: all their things from the flat in Kentish Town, waiting to be unpacked. Waiting for Lisa to come back and make it all matter again.

There's a rustle to his left. Ianto jerks upright, startled. Jack is sitting next to the bed, a book in his hand. He doesn't say anything, just studies Ianto for a while, before reaching over for a thermos on the bedside table.

"Tea," he says, filling the cup. "Courtesy of Gwen, who had to drive to the Tesco Metro to get it, and the milk, and the sugar, not to mention the Hob Nobs... And the kettle. You do know you have absolutely nothing in your kitchen, right?" 

He reaches into a pocket, pulling out a small hip-flask and pouring a generous slug into the cup. 

"And this is brandy, my contribution. Here, drink."

Questions are hard, but orders he can cope with. Ianto takes the cup. It's only half-filled, which is a good thing from the way the tea shakes and sloshes as he takes a sip. Hot, sweet, and a bit too milky, though maybe that's the brandy changing the taste.

He drains the cup obediently, but when Jack says, "More?" he shakes his head. 

"Okay. Go back to sleep."

He lies down again, and Jack picks the book up. Ianto watches him in profile, reading quickly and intently. 

He's sitting on a wooden chair from the kitchen, his feet on the corner of the bed. It doesn't look comfortable. Ianto braces himself, then says, "I'm not going to do anything, I mean - it's up to you now, what happens. You don't need to stand guard."

"That's not why I'm here. Go to sleep."

He wants to, because the alternative is giving in to that feeling that something else is about to explode. But he needs to get one last confession out first.

"Down in the basement, did you... There's a, another, a man. A body. He -"

"Yeah, I know." Jack looks at him then. "Dr Tanizaki. The cybernetics guru. I recognised him - well, you know, from his wallet. Not so much from his - whoa!"

Ianto's out of the bed, across the hall, into the bathroom and, okay, so he only makes it as far as the sink and not the toilet bowl, but it's only tea coming up anyway. Even so, it takes a while for the retching to subside.

Jack has followed him in, watching silently as Ianto sluices out the sink, scoops water into his mouth, then picks up the toothbrush and scrubs away, concentrating, one section of jaw at a time, thirty seconds each.

“So, not even a teaspoon in the kitchen, but you managed to sort out the bathroom,” Jack says at last. He sounds amused. Ianto drops the toothbrush back into its glass, reaching for the towel. The cold is ebbing back again, inching up from the bathroom lino through the soles of his feet. He shivers, hands shaking as he tries to hang the towel back straight on the rail.

It's quite a nice bathroom - he'd been lucky, really, took the first place the estate agent had suggested. It's small, but new and very clean. Too quiet now, though. All he can hear is his own breathing, in and out with a tiny hitch he can't seem to quell. 

"You should do it here," he says to Jack, and he's surprised to hear his voice sounding so calm, almost normal.

"Do what?"

Ianto keeps his eyes on the towel rail. "It'd be easier in here. The rest of the flat's carpet and laminate. That stuff's a bugger to get clean."

"Look, I honestly don't know what you're talking about."

He turns then. Jack is sitting on the side of the bath, hands clasped loosely. 

"You said, if I didn't - kill her, then you'd execute me."

Jack stares, then gives a snort, rubbing one hand over his face.

"Aw, come on, Ianto. One thing I have figured out - you're way smarter than I'd given you credit for. And I knew you weren't exactly an idiot before. If I was going to kill you, I'd have done it back at Torchwood. Why would I bring you back here?"

"So they don't know," Ianto says flatly. "Gwen. Toshiko, maybe. You fake a suicide. You've got Sally's body, the pizza girl. Do something to her head, to disguise the, the, where the saw - you know, and bring her here... Then it'd have to be pills, or cut my wrists in the bath, something like that. Murder-suicide. Nice and easy for the police."

"Well that's, uh, melodramatic. Have you been lying in there working this all out?" 

Ianto shrugs. "I'm just thinking out loud, what the options are. It's what you've had me doing for months now. Sticking bodies on the railway line, or in the Bay. That kid with the car exhaust. It's - I'm just being practical."

"No, you're being stupid. Or morbid, and I don't know which annoys me more. You really think I'm working through some big plan here? That's kind of flattering, but I promise you I have no idea what I'm doing." He stands up so quickly that Ianto flinches back instinctively. "Come on. You need to get back into bed."

He steers Ianto back into the bedroom. Ianto sits on the bed, and that's his brief spurt of energy all drained flat again. He wraps his arms around his knees and rocks, and Jack stands there, looking down at him, frowning. 

"Jesus, Ianto, look at you – you’re skin and bone. I found a sleeping bag in the basement, when I was clearing up. Have you even slept in this place before? How long were you living down there?" 

He's been back to the flat once a week, every Saturday afternoon, to wash his clothes and pick up the mail. He shrugs helplessly. “From when they sent the HQ stuff up here, when I came here, with her... I needed to be with her.”

“Some mornings you looked like death, you know?" Jack says quietly. "Flitting around the Hub like the world's most immaculate vampire. I used to tell myself that you were just young, too busy going out and getting shit-faced every night, screwing your way around Cardiff. Of course, I knew I was kidding myself. Mostly I just thought, _Oh great, Ianto’s in early again, thank God. I can get some decent coffee_.”

He wants to get back under the duvet again, but he doesn’t have the energy even to lie down. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, head in his hands, and Jack gives a strange, strained laugh.

“I guess you didn’t notice that was me there, trying to work my way up to an apology. Look, if you and I start saying sorry now, neither of us is going to be done by the next Millennium. Come on, have some more tea. It’ll help.”

No brandy this time. Ianto holds the thermos cup in both hands, sipping slowly, and the sick feeling fades after a while. Eventually, he curls up on his side and lets Jack tug the duvet up and drape it over him.

Still too cold, but he closes his eyes anyway, listening to the faint rasp of Jack turning page after page.

It's too silent. Plans, there were always plans before, things to do, fears to conquer. He's fallen asleep for months now to the indifferent hum of Cyber technology, the steady _shush, shush_ of Lisa's ventilator. Trying to improve the medications, trying to get the new components she needed, trying to find someone who could help. Trying to keep their secret. 

Telling her, over and over, that it would all be okay, that he'd look after her and protect her and keep her safe, make her well.

Nothing now. He broke his promise. He can feel the cold trickling into the empty space, flooding him. He's always wondered what it would feel like to drown.

***

_When it's dark,_ he told her, _you can see the words written in light, reflecting out onto the Bay._

He’s at the Millennium Centre, standing in the sweeping foyer while lunchtime visitors ebb and flow around him. Nice, normal lives. It's a good place to gather up other people's conversations, little scraps and anecdotes to share with Lisa on the nights when she wakes up. Better than telling her about his own job in this strange shambles of a Torchwood. None of HQ's slick City shine, just long maddening hours of inaction: the office drudge, manning the fake Information Centre, cleaning up the Hub, almost invisible. 

He hadn't wanted to share the sudden scattered bursts of activity with her either - rarely anything beautiful, just more filth, monsters and predators spewed up by the Rift. 

And absolutely not a word about those moments when he would look up and catch Jack watching him, with an almost fierce hunger. He can't ever tell Lisa how he'd whored himself out to get them both here - served himself up, knowing Jack's reputation and playing right up to it.

In an existence built on lies and treachery, she won't ever know what Ianto can barely admit to himself. The memory of that night Jack had hired him, post-chase, lying in that warehouse pressed together chin to toe, his whole body alight with adrenaline and fear and -

And desire. Yes. Clever, clever Ianto, who somehow hadn't guessed at that or planned for it. Some days he stands there in the Hub, meets Jack's eyes, bold as you please. _Do it, then, yeah. Why don't you, Jack? Everything you're thinking about. I'm up for it, all of it. More. I'd do you right now. I'd out-do you, you have no idea..._

No wonder then, days like these he has to escape that claustrophobic hole in the ground before he drowns in hormones with nowhere to go. Much safer here over in the Centre, in the sun-flooded foyer, watching oblivious visitors, and - wait - there, it's - _she's here too._

Oh, Lisa. Oh, my love.

She's in the rich orange vest she'd been wearing the very first time he'd seen her at the HQ induction. Gliding through the crowd like a swan, and he can hear a song, faintly over the hubbub of voices, _one star awake_. 

She takes his hand, laughing. 

_Come on love, we have things to do, remember? It won't be long..._

She kisses Ianto quickly and heads off towards the stairs. He starts after her, but the crowd surges around her and carries her away. He stays rooted to the spot, feeling the sweet warmth where her lips had pressed against his cheek. 

_I wanted you to see!_ , Ianto calls out, but his voice is swallowed by the chatter of the foyer crowd. He’d promised to show her all of it, the building right over her head, just as soon as she was cured. Described it all, the wood and the slate, copper dome surging above, the words glowing at night. _Gwir fel gwydr. Truth like glass_. 

It’s okay now, though, isn't it? She’s here now. She can see it all now.

When he wakes up, he’s shaking so hard the duvet is half-off, and his face is wet, and it's dark in the room. From the chair, Jack says, "Are you awake?"

It doesn't matter if Jack isn't planning to kill him, because the cold definitely will. "D-d-dream," Ianto stutters, then: "Freezing."

"Yeah, me too. I couldn't figure out how to get the heating on in this place. Can you imagine that? Alien hyper-technology, no problem. British Gas? I'm screwed every time."

The mattress shifts as Jack sits on the bed. Ianto feels a hand on his face, cupping his cheek. Warm, warm like a furnace. He turns, pushing his face closer, his lips tingling as they press against Jack's palm, and he lets himself be reeled in. Puts an arm around Lisa's murderer, and clings on like he was drowning.

No, part of him knows now that's not fair. It was Cybermen that had put her to death months ago, in London, violating her body and her memories to manipulate him. But Jack had planned that terrible distraction for their escape, held him back as the Hub platform soared up and Lisa screamed below. Or someone - _something_ \- that sounded like Lisa, smelled like her, wept human tears from Lisa's eyes, knew all the things they'd ever done together.

His head is spinning. Ianto screws his own eyes shut and tries to bury himself in the warmth of Jack's solid, tight embrace.

***

When he wakes up again, Jack's standing by the window, silhouetted against pale pre-dawn light. He looks around when Ianto sits up.

"Okay, listen. I have to get back to Torchwood now, I need to finish the clean-up. And you need some time to yourself, to decide what you're going to do. But you have to promise me something before I go."

Ianto feels dehydrated and not all there. "Um... okay."

"If you don't want to come back, you call me and tell me. I don't want to be sitting around day in day out wondering if I need to go recruiting again. I think you owe me that, at least."

That doesn't make any sense at all. Ianto tries to sit up properly, scrubbing at his hair. "You'd - you'd let me come back?" Jack nods, shrugging. "Why?"

"It's easier for me. You know your job - you do it well, when you're not lying to me and deceiving me right under my nose. You have a hell of a lot to make up for, and guilt's a great motivator, in my experience. So yeah, I want you right back where I can keep an eye on you, working that deceitful little ass off for me, paying your debt. That practical enough for you?"

Ianto stays silent, hands knotted in the duvet. It's not as if he can expect anything better, he knows that. Jack nods curtly, as if he'd replied, and opens the bedroom door. On the threshold, though, he turns back.

"Listen. The thing is, I don't - I don't take too well to being betrayed by people I care about. But I know I'm going to stop being pissed about this, eventually, because I know why you did it. I may not like it, but I do understand, Ianto. And maybe when I've stopped wanting to beat the crap out of you, all I'll remember is how impossible all this must have been for you. On the good days, I might even think of you as a little bit heroic."

He gives Ianto the faintest of smiles, and then he's gone.

***

The rest of the flat is still freezing, but the bed has warmed up. Ianto stays there, sleeping and dreaming. When the tea in the thermos has gone, he shuffles into the kitchen and makes more, watching kettle-steam filling the room, but not bothering to try to light the boiler. He takes the thermos back to bed, draws the curtains, drinks hot black tea and sleeps again.

There are no clocks in the flat, and no sign of his watch. He huddles in bed, trying not to feel the silence inside his own head crushing him into oblivion. The alternative is thinking about all the things he can't even begin to cope with.

It might be a day later, or half a day, or two. Doesn't matter. Ianto showers, feeling stiff and sore, staring down at the bruises from shoulder to hip from where she'd thrown him over the rail, and the finger-marks on his arms, where the others had wrestled with him. It feels like another country, another life.

He shaves, absorbed for a while in the careful ritual. There are plenty of clean clothes in the wardrobe, ironed and folded precisely: he is his father's son, in that at least. He gets dressed, and goes into the living room. There's a carrier bag on top of the nearest stack of boxes. Inside he finds his wallet, phone, watch and keys, and - out of its frame - the picture from the basement, of the two of them on holiday in Brittany. Less than a year ago now, that would have been. 

It's a nice photo. He'd placed it where Lisa could see it, to remind her of who she really was, under what they'd done to her. She'd never asked for a mirror: maybe the cyber identity had known what that would do. The rest of the holiday album must still be down there, and the books he'd read to her, the CD player, a bottle of Calvin Klein's Obsession, her favourite...

Jack will be thorough, though. _I need to finish the clean-up_. Jack will obliterate everything. Ianto's seen him do that before - one of the pieces of equipment that stays under the most secure storage. He's no idea how it works, but it doesn't even leave dust. He'll have used it on everything down there. The Cyber tech, and anything that might have been in contact with it. It will all be suspect, in Jack's eyes.

He doesn't exactly think about Lisa, just lets the knowledge settle into him, that there won't be a body or anything else for him to claim.

He draws the curtains, switches the lights on, and goes through the boxes, sorting her things from his: clothes, shoes, her make-up and jewellery, far too many CDs. Most of it can go to charity: he'll find a shop in Bristol or Reading, somewhere not too near. A few things go into the carrier bag along with the photo. A strip of Photo-Me pictures, the two of them clowning around on an early date. Birthday and Christmas cards, three letters - they hadn't been apart much, once they got together. In a cuff-links box he finds his horde of the notes and Post-Its she used to leave stuck around the flat or on his desk at HQ, with doodles of tiny dragons and teasing little jokes.

It takes the time it takes. He goes back to bed at one point, and eats the Hob Nobs when he gets light-headed, even though he detests the way they get stuck in his teeth. There isn't anything else, and he can't face going out for groceries.

It's dark when he's done. His watch says 18.15. He leaves some boxes out in the alley by the bins and gets into the car, with the carrier bag on the passenger seat next to him. He heads off, stopping for chips and Coke on the way, and eats and drinks as he drives out of the city.

***

It takes him nearly five hours to get to Abersoch: not bad, considering it's at night, and the signs around Criccieth aren't as straightforward as they could do with being. It's good to have to concentrate on the driving. 

He hasn't been here since he was twenty, but it's surprisingly easy to find his way back to the empty car-park at Porth Ceiriad. He takes the carrier bag and a torch from the boot, picking his way carefully down the stone steps cut into the cliff-face. It's pitch dark: no moon for this journey. A dry, cold night with not another soul in sight.

Ianto sits high on the beach against a rock, with the torch out. There's no wind here, and the waves are a subdued murmur. After a while, he can make out stars, and the distant winking lights of ships out in Cardigan Bay.

He thinks about lighting a fire, but she's been burned too much already. Salt water will be okay, though. He puts the carrier bag between his knees, reaches in, shreds everything slowly and carefully, sifting each torn square of paper and pinching it down between his gradually numbing fingers, until there's nothing but a heap of soft confetti. 

As the sky starts to lighten far off to his left, Ianto kicks off his trainers, walks down the beach and into the sea, feeling the icy November water hammer against his legs. He takes the paper chaff and scatters it in handfuls, turns the bag inside-out over the slate-and-glass water, watches coloured flecks bobbing and swirling with the waves.

Empty. He's a bubble of glass, clean and empty and invisible again.

He sits half out of his car, jeans wet to mid-thigh, and dials the number. When Jack answers, Ianto says, "Can I come back, Sir?"

There's a small, sharp silence, then Jack says, "Sure. When?"

"Today... later today?"

"Good. I'll get Tosh to text the new passcodes to you," Jack says briskly, and hangs up. 

No sentiment, no questions asked: just how Jack likes it. Ianto puts the empty bag into the nearest bin, gets back into the car and starts the engine. He'll be back in Torchwood by mid-day.


End file.
